(i) Field to which the invention relates
The present invention is with respect to a system for working leads of electrical components, having an inlet unit with a guideway and fixedly supported on a base, two tools designed for operation with said inlet unit and powered by a driving motor, the tools each being positioned on a different one of two tool supports so that they may be moved towards each other for bending and kinking the leads of the said components between them, the leads running into the working path of the tools, which are supported on a carriage designed for a backward and forward working motion, parallel to the inlet unit's guideway and which are able to be moved towards each other for shutting in a direction normal to the inlet direction of the components and in timed relation to the working motion of said carriage. In connection with this apparatus, the wording "supply path" is taken to be the path of the components as supplied by the inlet unit into the range of motion of the tools.
(ii) The prior art
Electrical components are generally produced with more or less straight leads which have to be bent and kinked for wiring electrical circuits and for being electrically joined. Generally, such leads have to be cut to a desired length by the user. Such operations are generally simple in the case of cylindrical components with leads sticking out of their opposite end faces, because the leads are generally bent in a single direction and are kinked in the same way. For this purpose, apparatus has been put forward in the past, see the German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,400,307, in which the components are transported by having their two leads taken up in spaces between the teeth of one or more pairs of toothed transport wheels, used for presenting the components to the bending and cutting tool.
On the other hand, the present invention is with respect to the processing or working of components whose leads are not placed sticking out from opposite ends of the body of the component but come out of it side-by-side on one side of the component or have been bent to one side of the component body in an earlier stage of processing. Because of their unsymmetrical form, such components may not readily be smoothly and continuously transported and presented to the processing stations. Furthermore, the leads have to be bent and kinked in different directions.
In one apparatus of the sort noted at the start of the present specification (see German Offenlegungsschrift No. 2,920,059), the components are moved out of a supply box, for example by way of a normal vibratory conveyer, to an inlet unit having a chute, by which they are then presented to the tools, the chute ending at the position at which the tools come into operation. A compound motion of the tools is produced, such motion taking the form of a shutting motion normal to the length of the opening of the chute and, at the same time, a working motion taking place in the direction of, or towards, the chute. The shutting and working parts of the compound motion take place at the same time, in timed relation to each other, as a backward and forward periodic motion. At the time of the shutting motion, the leads of the components are gripped by the tools, worked or processed and then freed again, while the working motion is responsible for taking the components from the chute and handing them over to an output point, the working of the leads taking place at the time of this forwardly-directed part of the compound working motion. Driving of the carriage for producing the working motion takes places by way of an eccentric and pitman, by a driving cam and a follower roller or the like on the carriage or the like, the necessary power coming from the driving motor. The shutting motion of the tools is produced, in the case of this apparatus (forming the starting point of the present invention) from the working motion because the driving fingers, joined with the tool support, are guided, in each case, in a double-acting cam, that is to say a cam in which the follower is run in a groove.
While it is possible to say that this form of apparatus, forming the starting point of the present invention, has gone down well in the industry, it has turned out that, in general use, producing the shutting motion from the working motion as noted is responsible for serious shortcomings. On the one hand, very exact adjustment is necessary to make certain that the tools are controlled and powered in the desired way smoothly, while, on the other hand, on use in the trade, it is necessary, in the case of such apparatus, for the shutting motion to undergo exact adjustment with respect to the length of the motion and the middle position of the tools in the shut position. Such adjustment is necessary, for example, for exactly producing the desired kink form, or, on changing the tools, for retooling, and other purposes. Adjustment of the shutting motion is still, generally speaking, complex in the case of the apparatus noted, taken as the starting point by my present invention.